164 ALASKA GLACIERS 



front for 35 miles, but disposed of a continuous accession 

 of ice from the Muir, Grand Pacific, and other glaciers. 

 Of that portion of the confluent glacier which lay upon 

 the land, a part slid into the sea and was there melted, but 

 another part, which happened to rest on comparatively 

 flat surfaces, remained on the land and has been subjected 

 to only atmospheric agencies of waste. These agencies 

 have not yet completed its destruction, so that extensive 

 patches of stagnant ice, receiving no accessions from 

 neves, remain to testify to the comparative feebleness of 

 the atmospheric attack. I think there can be no exag- 

 geration in the estimate that the melting by the sea has 

 exceeded by ten times the melting from direct insolation 

 and the contact of warm air and warm rain. It is further 

 to be noted that this work of the sea was performed in a 

 land-locked bay, where water cooled by the ice tends to 

 accumulate and is but slowly exchanged for the warmer 

 water of the open ocean. On the outer coast, where the 

 supply of warm water would be constantly renewed by 

 currents, the melting power would be still greater. 1 



The warmth of the Pacific Ocean in this region depends 

 chiefly on the great circling current of the North Pacific, 

 a part of the planetary system of oceanic circulation which 

 might be modified but would not be stopped by any causes 

 we may suppose to have existed in Pleistocene time. All 

 through the Pleistocene the melting power of the ocean 

 along this coast must have been great, and it is not prob- 

 able that glaciers could so far have withstood it as to ad- 

 vance in deep water. The features of another part of the 

 Alaska coast, to be presently described, render it probable 

 that the glaciers were checked by the oceanic melting 

 somewhere in the belt of shallow water, and were com- 



1 Muir Inlet near the glacier is 7,000 feet broad and 500 feet deep. Here Reid 

 found a general temperature, at all depths, of 38 F. The oceanic temperature 

 in the Gulf of Alaska is 58 F. The water of the inlet is 6 degrees warmer than 

 melting ice, that of the neighboring ocean 26 degrees. 



